For most people, their wedding day is the happiest day of their lives. You have a big party with your friends and family celebrating you and your significant other’s love for one another. After a day of such highs, waking up the next morning can be a jolt back into reality.
Here are 17 stories from newlyweds describing their strange first day of marriage.
1. Ouch
We woke up, looked at each other and smiled. I asked him, ‘Darling, am I still as beautiful to you now as I was back then … on our wedding day?’
We’re divorced now. So maybe not.
2. No Sleep, DMV, Disappearing
We spent the night at the Vitner’s Inn in Sonoma county, it was absolutely beautiful with the fog through the vineyards. My husband woke me up early at 8:00. I was hungover but he was hungry or hangry rather. So he got me up and we made it to breakfast. I wasn’t even hungry yet, still a little queasy but he insisted and I was in no shape to argue. We ordered a delicious meal that I could barely eat but got wrapped up to go. I was ready to get back in the big bed and fall back to sleep but he could not and insisted we leave and check out. Our wedding had been held in his parent’s backyard and he said we should go help clean up.
His family was shocked to see us so early. He blew past them and started taking down decorations. I made a beeline for the couch, where I stayed until we got to opening presents. After a brief nap, we opened cards and gifts. We had asked for money so it was mostly cards. He sped that along and we were headed home in no time. I got into my pjs and posted up on the couch. Instead of changing into comfort wear, he got dressed and insisted he needed money to go to the DMV to pay a bill. I was definitely not up for the DMV so I said I’d be home on the couch waiting for him.
He didn’t come home that day nor that night. He didn’t come home the next day either. When I did speak to him he told me he was suicidal and didn’t want to tell me where he was. I called all of his spots, he was an alcoholic so it was his bars and his drinking friends. I called the bar where a friend of his was a bartender, he wasn’t there but I immediately got a call back. Turns out he had been with her, sleeping on her couch and helping her out by watching her two kids. He said they were broke and the kids barely had food. I was sympathetic and trying to help everyone, so I insisted he take what he could from our cupboards and freezer to help them out. He came and got the food and didn’t come back.
By the end of the week I found out he hadn’t been sleeping on her couch and had more than likely spent the night before our wedding and the subsequent week with her. And that is the story of my 1 week long marriage. Why he even went through with the wedding I will never know. For unknown reasons, 3 years later they are still together but thankfully on the other side of the country.
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3. A Normal Day For Her
Well, it was a normal day. I got up, brushed my teeth and got dressed and gave my new sleeping husband a kiss on the cheek as I left for my chemistry class that morning… I couldn’t miss a lab class after all.
Not what you were expecting perhaps? Well I got married at the ripe old age of 19 as a freshman in college. My husband and I eloped on the beach in Seattle about a month before he was scheduled to ship out for his second deployment. We didn’t have the money for a hotel room after buying dinner for our friends who came to witness the marriage so we spent our first married night in my dorm room sharing a tiny twin bunk bed.
I worked until midnight the night before my wedding, and attended class the morning of. I distinctly remember telling my professor that I would have to leave my calculus class about 15 minutes early. He was clearly irritated and asked me what was so important that I needed to disrupt his class and leave… he turned beet red when I told him that I was getting married in 3 hours and didn’t want to be late to my own wedding. Needless to say, he didn’t have a problem with me stepping out a bit early.
It’s been a little over two years since we married. I’m now a college senior and set to graduate a year early, with my sights set on medical school. He’s still active duty and is planning to start college next year to pursue a career in clinical psychology.
4. Don’t Panic!
Very stressful. My friends always used to advise me that I should perform sexually well on my wedding night. So I was all prepared, but on the wedding night I couldn’t get hard. Whatever I did I couldn’t get hard. I didn’t know what to do so I just slept.
The next day I was really stressed out and since it was my first time I couldn’t perform, I hoped the next day would be fine. But even on the next day I couldn’t get hard. I was like OMG what am I gonna do now.
Finally on third day I took tablet that helps erectile dysfunction. Finally I got hard and had good time. After all it was all because of panic. Since then I’m able to get hard naturally.
If anyone gets into the same trouble like me, don’t panic it’s just normal. Things will be fine.
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5. Tragedy Strikes
My husband and I got married a little over a week ago and have spent the last week in Hawaii far from our home in the midwest. The honeymoon was going great, until tragedy struck.
We have two female dogs, both rescues, and absolutely indoor dogs. We live right next to a highway. Given the opportunity, the more dominant of the two has and will always run away for doggie adventure. Each time has ended in a near-death experience for her and a well-instilled fear of what might happen if she ever got away again. Because of this, we require our dogs [to be] on leashes 100% of the time, with or without us there…
We left our dogs with my parents, as we live in the same town, and have left them there numerous times in the past. We always double-check our instructions with them, always leashed and keep a close eye on the adventurous one. The other dog, much younger and extremely submissive, would surely follow her older sister to the ends of the earth for no reason whatsoever.
Later that day, my brother informed us that my mother had simply let them go, just released them into the wild precisely against the incredibly specific instructions that had been left with them. We found out that this release-and-return method had been used a few times previous to this, further hurting my trust and faith in those I love most…
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6. A Very Long Day
It was a long day. The night before, we had not fallen asleep until well past 11 o’clock, and we had to wake up before 6 AM. We packed all of our things, got everything packed into our car and I brought it around front for the missus.
We chatted as I drove: about how excited we were to be married, about our plans for the honeymoon, about our future together. After about twenty minutes, I kissed her goodbye at the dialysis clinic.
My wife suffers from polycystic kidney disease – effectively, her kidneys stopped growing when she was 2–3 years old, and the transplant she received at 8 began to reject in her early twenties. This last fact, however, was not discovered until after we had started dating. Three days after, to be precise. At the time of our wedding, she had been on dialysis for nearly 15 months.
I then drove to work and prepared a few final invoices, third-party cost reports and payrolls for various projects. I went over my notes and current status with my manager, and told him, ‘If you have any questions, please hesitate to call.’ Ha ha – smooth and froody.
It was now time to pick the wife up from the clinic. When I arrived, I could tell that her happiness had taken the edge off of what had clearly been a below average treatment. Luckily, she was able to rest somewhat during the drive to Guthrie, where we had rented a secluded cabin for a few days before we headed to Chicago.
In short, it was like most days that I’ve loved this amazing woman who happens to suffer from ESRD – too long, and always far too brief.
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7. A Horrible Start To A Horrible Honeymoon
Speaking to my first marriage:
After discovering that we’d been robbed during the wedding (all our honeymoon travel cash, some gifts), we spent a fairly stressful night in the Honeymoon Suite. The next morning, we woke up to my dad knocking on the door. He gave me some cash for our honeymoon. I saw him off, as my new wife got dressed. We decamped for our apartment, and loaded up for the honeymoon.
Theory was, we were spending a week at a family friend’s house on Lake Lyndon B. Johnson, about 60 miles northwest of Austin. That theory also held that we’d be departing before noon, and that we’d arrive mid-afternoon. Theory and practice diverged and we didn’t clear Houston until nearly 5:00PM. Which put us looking at needing to spend the night in route someplace. And we didn’t really have budget for that.
Fortunately, we did have sleeping bags. And there was a conveniently located state park that we encountered. The man at the gate offered us a ‘cabin’ for only $10 for the night, and we took it. ‘Cabin’ turned out to mean ‘concrete slab with four walls made mostly of window-screen material and a door that doesn’t lock, with a leaky roof with bats living in the rafters.’ There was not a repeat of any actual wedding night performances. There was barely sleep.
The next morning we got up at first light, shook the whatever-the-hell-that-was-on-the-floor off the sleeping bags, and loaded up. Aaaannnnnd about ten minutes down the road, there’s this massive panic as my wife is looking through her purse, swearing. She asks me to pull over, and continues furiously searching the trunk, swearing more. Eventually she settles into the car, sobbing. ‘We have to go to Austin.’ She’s forgotten her birth control pills and it’s a really, really inconvenient time for her to have done that. Oh.
We hit Austin about noon, and calls to Planned Parenthood turn up goose-egg: she can’t get an emergency re-supply, they’re not willing to call the clinic she uses in Houston to confirm, sorry, have a nice day. So she decides we’re going to raid her college roommate’s house. Said college roommate was in the wedding party and is not in Austin. She’s at Lake Jackson with her parents. I wind up climbing an outside balcony, picking a lock and letting us in. She can’t find the much looked for stash of birth control pills. Long drive back to Houston in silence ensues. The rest of the week didn’t go much better.
8. Funnnn
We cleaned a fridge. What? Yes, we had a brand new fridge fully stocked with fresh groceries. One item in the fridge was a glass container of cold-brew coffee. The fridge must have been too cold because that jar blew its lid in middle of the night.
So the first morning after getting married we carefully cleaned each item and together we wiped every surface in the fridge. We then raised the temperature slightly and put everything back.
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9. It Was The Worst
Oh man, it was the worst! We eloped, but it was well planned… him in a tux, me in a beautiful wedding gown, with a photographer, and just a few friends. I could tell he was stressed that day, but I didn’t know he was having second thoughts. Mainly because it was his idea to get married (got down on his knee and proposed with a huge ring from tiffany’s). I said yes because I was deeply in love with him. He said I made him the happiest man in the world.
BUT… back to the wedding day, he seemed to go back and forth between happy and very unhappy. We didn’t make love that night. The next morning, his housekeeper called. She congratulated him and he could barely say thank you. He was so unhappy. I didn’t know what to do to bring him back. We didn’t fight, but he was so cold, like a different person. A few days later, he searched out a therapist and started seeing him 3 times a week. He was having trouble ‘dealing with such a big life change.’ It was a first marriage for both of us. I was 37, he was 36. We weren’t kids. Long story short, he filed for divorce 3 months later because he “changed his mind”. I was crushed, inconsolable. To add insult to injury, I spent the majority of my savings on the divorce attorney. Almost went bankrupt. Still paying down credit cards since my monthly income didn’t cover the legal fees.
Don’t think I’ll ever get married again.
10. Keeping Up Appearances
My wife and I were married in 1979. It was uncommon for people to cohabitate before marriage and was frowned upon by many people I knew. My wife grew up in an Italian-American household and was always very conscious of her behavior. So were her parents, who were somewhat strict and old fashioned. We never spent a night together, went away and shared a room together, etc. I am not saying we were celibate…we simply were careful to respect/protect her reputation and her parents wishes.
When she woke up the next day in the hotel after our wedding night, she got very nervous. When I pressed her on it, she told me she was embarrassed to see her parents because they would obviously ‘know what we had done last night.’ She was even more embarrassed that they were meeting us in our suite and would see the bed we had slept in. My wife was certainly no prude. Her intent was simply that her parents saw her in the best possible light. She thought about it and decided to quickly MAKE THE BED before they arrived!
She needn’t have worried. When her parents arrived, they kissed us both good morning, helped us with our luggage, and invited us to breakfast before we boarded our flight for a 2 week honeymoon.
We landed and arrived at our hotel, it was late afternoon. We had dinner and drinks and retired early. Unfortunately we didn’t get much sleep (Don’t jump to conclusions and tell me you know the reason why. It’s not what you think). The room next to us was the site of an ALL NIGHT FRAT PARTY. Can’t get more romantic than that.
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11. Like A Hangover
Ours was like a hangover, but without alcohol or drugs. The lesson we learned that night was to ALWAYS PLAN AHEAD!
We were married in central Kentucky on the first weekend of July 20+ years ago. We had reservations at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis the next day, but figured we would just find something in the ten hour drive between our city and there. We opened wedding gifts with our family and then went to our favorite local Thai restaurant for dinner before heading out of town.
The adrenaline of the day began wearing off outside Nashville, so we decided to find a place to stay the night. Unless you wanted a smoking room (which we vehemently did not), there were no rooms available in all of Nashville. We had been so preoccupied with the wedding that we forgot that, despite the actual date being two days ago, it was still the 4th of July weekend.
We figured that we would find a place somewhere further west on our journey. We had no idea how wrong we would be.
The next population center of any size was also booked solid. We were starting to become tired, but we did not despair as there were more decent sized towns between there and Memphis. Onward!
The next decent size place had four hotels, but there were no vacancies. It was now early in the morning and a sense of dread was beginning to form in our tired minds. It increased yet again when the next wide spot in the road was full. (continued…)
We eventually stopped at a Budgetel Hotel about 30 miles outside of Memphis. It was booked solid too, but we were now to tired and sleepy to go any further. Although we were close to Memphis, check-in at the Peabody wasn’t until 11am.
We gave up and decided to sleep in that hotel parking lot in the front seats of our Honda Accord. I am 6?4? and was a lean and muscular 230 at the time, so the pavement would have likely been a more comfortable bed for me. As it was that wonderful time of summer, it was exceeding hot and humid even in the wee hours of the morning. We knew we couldn’t let the car just sit there and idle with the AC running for four hours. You may or may not know, but Memphis is a pretty high crime area. We were stupid enough not to book a room for the night in advance but smart enough not to sleep with the car windows rolled down in the parking lot of a motel 30 miles outside Memphis. For the next three hours we alternated between sleeping a bit with the car running and the AC on and turning the car off and sleeping until we were so hot we woke up again had to turn the car back on. We were miserable.
We had finally had enough around 6am and started heading west again. We stopped at a gas station and got some bottled water so we could brush our teeth and wash the odor of garlic out of our mouths from our Thai dinner twelve hours ago. A few more miles down the interstate we found a Cracker Barrel.
When we finally made it down to the Peabody and to our room, we cranked up the AC and collapsed in our bed. We both felt like we had been beaten. No thought of wedded sex. Sleep in a comfy bed was much more desirable. Luckily, we had a great two week vacation after that.
12. Another Wedding
My brother got married the day after me and as I was the best man and my wife was a bridesmaid then our first day as a married couple was somewhat involved in a wedding. We actually enjoyed my brother’s wedding day somewhat more than our own, it has much less pressure.
It may seem weird for this to happen, but it was actually very convenient. I lived 1800 km away and much of my extended family is 3000 km away and thus having two weddings over two days in close proximity to each other made it easier for everyone.
Source
13. Took His Breath Away, Literally
Stressful and worrisome. My husband went into the hospital on our wedding night. He was having an irregular heartbeat, which had previously gone undetected. His portable oxygen wasn’t giving him enough O2 so he was having trouble breathing.
Thankfully everything worked out well in the end. I told him that he needed to tell everyone that when he married me I took his breath away and made his heart go pitty patter. That sounded a whole lot better than he had to be hauled away by ambulance in his tux a few hours after we had gotten married.
Source
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14. Pure Ecstasy
My wife and I ‘eloped’ by having a wedding in our apartment with 60 of our friends but not telling our families (We had a proper family wedding 7 months later, and 10 years later still haven’t told anyone).
The day after the wedding, some time around 1am, my wife and I and the closest of our friends did MDMA and partied through the night. We watched the sun rise on our roof while the moon set on the other side of the sky. It was amazing.
10 years on we’re still happily married and loving life. That ecstatic feeling lasts a lifetime.
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15. Talk About Anti-Climatic
I actually don’t remember, because it was like any other day.
Our wedding was pretty much the same. We woke up early, went to the local office, we got married, she went to work and was reprimanded for being late (until she told them that she just got married) then they reprimanded her for even coming in and told her to take the next day off, but she did not, so as far as I recall she got on her bike and rode to work, then came home at the same time as always and we had dinner and probably watched some TV.
We were actually planning to get married the day before, but when my friends heard about it they bought me a few rounds, so the next morning, on our planned wedding day, I woke up a it hungover and said ‘Can we just do this tomorrow?’ She drowsily said ‘Sure’.
Source
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16. Not A Good Foot To Start On
I wasn’t speaking to my husband the day after our wedding because I’d gotten mad that he was spending too much time with his buddies at our reception, and he wasn’t speaking to me because I’d decided to punish him by refusing to consummate the marriage when he finally tore himself away from his friends (I’d also broken the little groom off the cake topper and drowned him in a punch bowl).
We didn’t go on a honeymoon since hurricane Katrina had hit three days before the wedding and flights had been cancelled. We couldn’t even go to a local hotel because they were all full of refugees so we spent the day after our wedding at home, not talking. Luckily we were okay again by that evening and we managed to find a Chinese restaurant that was open and my husband took me out for our ‘honeymoon dinner.’ Thankfully we’ve both grown up since then and we now look back at our chaotic wedding and laugh at how dumb and young we were.
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17. He Broke A Promise On The First Day!
I woke up to an extremely hung-over husband. He then walked around our honeymoon suite to find out that I had opened all the presents our guests had brought, and drank the entire bottle of champagne that was left for the both of us.
He couldn’t really complain too much because he passed out at around 10pm from drinking too much. This was of course after I had asked him not to get too drunk at our wedding. I figured since he broke his promise I would open all the presents. I thought it was a good compromise since he was unable to respond to me.
After that we went to my parents house for brunch with the family. We ate and drank a few mimosas before we were to head off to the airport for our honeymoon in Hawaii.
Being pissed off at your new husband is not a good way to start a marriage. Not surprisingly we only lasted about two years.